The air supplied to aircraft when on the ground is produced in independent machines or specific places in airport terminals, being channelled towards aircraft by means of various systems. The most common include using channels embedded in the airport platform, conducts located on the same platform or via telescopic conducts located in the passenger boarding walkways.
With the above cases, the final few meters of said channels are usually formed by textile hoses, which are usually insulated and extremely flexible in order to enable them to be connected to aircraft easily, the use of tubes or rigid hoses therefore being discarded given that the same are difficult to manipulate.
Although the connection point to said channels systems is always found at a fixed point, quite the contrary occurs with aircraft air intake vents. More specifically, aircraft have air intake vents located in various places along their fuselage, depending on the model of the aircraft. Therefore, the distance between the connection points in said systems and the air intake vents in aircraft varies depending on the aircraft model.
For this reason, the flexible hoses employed to connect the channels systems to the aircraft must be variable in length, usually between 3 and 24 meters long, lengths of approximately 50 meters even being needed in certain aeroplanes.
When the flexible hose is not supplying air to aircraft, it is stored in a deposit or store, usually located beneath the boarding walkway. In other cases, it is usually rolled up in a drum or compressed inside a compartment, also located beneath the walkway. In the specific case of channels systems embedded in the airport platform the hose is usually deposited at the bottom of a compartment.
When it is supplying air to the aircraft, the hose must be completely extended, it being necessary for it to be fully extracted from its location, independently of the length required to supply each aircraft, given that were this not the case, air would not circulate inside the hose.
Having to extract the entire hose even when not necessary, the length between the fixed point of the system and the air intake vent of the aircraft being very short, presents various limitations:                The larger the amount of hose extracted, the greater the temperature and pressure loss between the fixed point of the system and the aircraft vent.        The entire hose extended on the platform is an obstacle for people carrying out their work in the aircraft connections area.        The hose wears down too much after rubbing against the platform floor.        The entire hose being extended in its totality results in the same becoming twisted, bent and clogged, thereby resulting in insufficient air flow therein.        
In this sense, some devices used to extract and collect air conditioning hoses are known about, which prevent the entire hose from having to be extracted, offering the possibility of extracting the exact hose length required in each case, whilst in turn guaranteeing that air is supplied to the aircraft correctly. Amongst such devices, those documented in WO2012/024062A and EP2085311A2 might be mentioned.
The recovery device object of document WO2012/024062A1 reveals a storage body and a tractor unit. A flexible hose is housed in the storage body, according to a longitudinal shaft of the same, crossed by a plurality of support bars. The tractor unit comprises extraction and collection means, configured to extract and collect a frontal end of the hose. Said means are formed by a motorized lateral fastening mechanism, formed by a number of pincers, which open or close around the flexible hose in order to free or fasten the same, respectively. The lateral fastening mechanism is joined to an extraction and collection mechanism, capable of sliding horizontally, in a direction parallel to the support bars. The repetitive forwards and backwards movements of the extraction and collection mechanism, each time freeing and gripping the hose, enable a horizontal extraction or collection movement of said hose.
The main limitation of this device is the discontinuous movement of the hose, in terms of both the extraction and collection thereof. In other words, the hose comes out little by little, the movement being interrupted each time the pincers repeat the freeing and fastening process relative to the same, in coordination with the sliding of the extraction and collection device. It therefore constitutes a slow extraction and collection process. Another limitation is that it requires a significant number of motors, requiring at least one for each pincer and another for horizontal sliding. In turn, this increases the cost and implies greater risk of break down. Finally, the pincers gripping the hose is usually quite aggressive, especially if the force of the pincer or the distance thereof relative to the hose is not adjusted accordingly and may therefore cause serious damage to the same.
The recovery device object of document EP2085311A2 also reveals a storage body and a tractor unit. A flexible hose is housed within a storage body, according to a longitudinal shaft of the same, crossed by a support beam. The tractor unit comprises extraction and collection means configured to extract and collect a frontal end of the hose. Said means are formed by an electric redactor motor, which moves a pinion system and a chain. The pinions transmit a rotational movement onto four shafts parallel to the support beam and around the same. In turn, said shafts transmit the movement onto four collection devices, each one of which causes a collection belt to rotate, according to a rotation shaft perpendicular to the longitudinal shaft of the storage body. Each one of these belts is in contact with the external surface of the flexible hose, in order to exert a friction force that enables a horizontal extraction or collection movement of the same.
This device does indeed enable continuous movement of the hose, in terms of both the extraction and collection thereof. However, it presents other significant limitations. In this sense, although it only has one single motor, the gear system for transmitting the movement of the same to the collection belts is in fact complicated. More specifically, the motor output shaft and belt rotation shaft are perpendicular to one another and in turn, perpendicular to the longitudinal shaft of the device. In other words, they are perpendicular to the movement of the hose. They all have a large number of transmission elements. In addition, each collection device needs at least four pulleys in order to maintain the tension needed to guarantee contact with the hose. Finally, the friction force that enables the horizontal extraction or collection movement of the hose is quite high and therefore somewhat aggressive for the hose, potentially causing serious damage to the same.
The present invention resolves the problems set out above in a fully satisfactory way, using a device for extracting and collecting air conditioning hoses, which simplifies the configuration of the extraction and collection means found in known systems. These means are based on the use of one or more helicoidal spindles in contact with the hose, which rotate on a rotation shaft parallel to the longitudinal shaft of the device, thus giving rise to a linear displacement of the hose along the length of said longitudinal shaft. The displacement occurs as a result of the push force exerted uniformly on a stretch of hose, thus moderating the friction on the same and reducing the wear thereof.